


as the sun bends

by littletrenchcoatangel



Category: Kings
Genre: I am so sorry for this, M/M, What Have I Done, au where we pretend i actually paid attention to things that happened in the show, i can't believe i made a pun about erections, i have no idea how to ratings pls don't hurt me, i mean i did but some things i used my artistic license to completely fuck the fuck up, jack does not believe in ur god, jack jerks off and it is poorly written, neck kissies, silas was a shit dude apparently and an even worse father, this is teen and up bc fuck you that's why
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 15:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1516199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littletrenchcoatangel/pseuds/littletrenchcoatangel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere in the middle, they meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as the sun bends

**Author's Note:**

> please forgive me for this i wrote this after marathoning every episode of kings and reading a bunch of jack/david fic and i'm just. this is probably out of character and i've never even come close to attempting anything nsfw ever so like whOOPS SORRY THAT WAS SO LAME. anyway just. i am bad at summaries and titles and writing characters in character and also sex things wow so bad sorry. forgive me for the super large amount of pathetic ooc dialogue and lame feelings from david. jack is the focus here and david kind of suffered for that. maybe. sort of. that's what it feels like anyway. i wish i had an excuse for this but i don't so. i'm not even gonna pretend i drafted this really well i just wrote it and read over it and went 'nope' for some things and 'whatever' for the rest. no betas. if there's fuck ups they're my fault. sorry. waht.  
> [title inspired by: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/212352/i-dont-believe-in-god-another-poem-about-love/]  
> [if you wanna know context or w/e before you read the fic go to the end notes and look at the monstrosity of a semi-au fuck up world summary i wrote for no reason]

Here, there is David.

Here, there is the Goliath.

Here, there is the sound of guns and grenades.

They know this, have known it for months, and know that whatever reality they find themselves in, this will always be the one to which they return.

In dreams, in waking, this reality of war is what they will know for all of time, and yet.

Here, there is blood.

Here, there is dirt.

Here, there is the sound of death and pain.

David has known suffering like no other, has known the pain of loss and loss and loss again, so much so that he begins to wonder if he will ever have anything again, and yet.

Here, there is Gilboa.

Here, there is Shiloh.

Here, there is the sound of man, of woman, and of life.

They know not of pain, here; they have not felt its claws in their skin for almost an entire generation, have not known fear despite the closeness of reason to.

None but the travellers, the ones that flit between this reality and the one _they_ know, know of this pain and suffering, and David, sweet and innocent and peaceful _David_ , has always been a traveller at heart.

And yet.

Here, there is heat.

Here, there is cold.

Here, there is the sound of seasons passing.

David has watched this city rise and fall and rise again and perhaps he has been the cause of each of those things at times, but only because he knows, has known and will always know that the pain of loss begets better things, despite how much it hurts, and better things will always be required.

And yet.

His God, their God, this _God_ that sent butterflies to crown a man who had never known enough of gentleness to inflict it upon others, has bid a man that once knew only of dirt and blood and war through battle with _land_ , not _people_ , be sent here, to where the opposite is true.

Here, in a place that grew out of the ashes like a phoenix, that grew from fire like nothing that they’d seen before, God bid Silas accept the hero that saved his son and with him, the knowledge that he would succeed him in every way.

In war, in peace, in loyalty to a crown he would one day wear himself.

In love.

In faith.

In hope.

Here, in Shiloh, away from the dirt and the blood and the cold of a war his father had died to prevent, God bid David become to the House of Benjamin a beacon of light that all but those that loved truly, deeply, and without fear of fault, would endeavour to extinguish, like the flames that kept their city down.

As the light of a candle goes out, and is lit, so too shall another follow it into the darkness.

And yet.

God bid David into the House of Benjamin, bid him love a woman who could not return his favour and bid him hate a man that had only ever loved them (but David could not hate, and so did not. The same could not be said of the other man). God gave David every reason to leave, tested his faith and his loyalty and his ambition, and watched on in silence as the House itself endeavoured to do the same.

David was pushed away at every turn, shuffled into darkened corners in an effort to hide his brilliance, dragged from the limelight that only served to enhance the star that he had always been, all in the hopes that the candle that went out would stay out.

And yet.

David was told by God to serve his king, and serve his king he had. Even as his king revoked his titles, even as his king made attempts to end his life, David went on to serve with every breath in his lungs and every beat of his heart.

The world had watched on as David was pushed into the very dirt he had been pulled out of, and very few were unsurprised when he grew out of it, twice as beautiful and three times as determined as he had been in all the times before.

God bid him stay, and he did. God gave him reason to leave, and he did not. God gave David reason to do as all but God wished him to, and David saw the tests for what they were, and did what was required of him.

Not because he knew the crown was his, not because he wanted to take it as he swore it was not, but because he knew what God truly wanted, and it was his divine duty to act accordingly.

And yet.

In years that pass, silence falls across Gilboa as if it were in mourning for a king it had never loved.

They do not mourn the king, nor do they mourn the wars he caused.

They mourn the love of a man free to rule from his seat beside the throne, who, even as he rules, is more disconnected from his people than ever he had desired or will again.

And yet.

Here, there is David.

Here, there is Jack.

Here, there is the sound of hearts beating and breaking and beating again.

 

“Yours is the only higher power I will ever have faith in again.”

David has known the suffering of loss like no other – no other, perhaps, than one Jonathan Benjamin – and to have this man proclaim this faith in him as king above all else comes as a shock to him and his own, the sheep that follow Shepherd as if he were such.

“Leave us,” bids the king, and like good sheep, they do.

The room clears, even of the guard – who once would have turned, rabid, on their king if the scent of enough gold made it to their noses; who had turned, once, but never will again, not against _this_ king – and David, King David, ruler over all, is alone.

Alone but for the presence of a man who had never had faith but proclaims it now as if he had never had anything but.

The years that have passed show on his face, he knows; his history can be read in the lines on his face and sketches of it exist within the scars across his skin.

His exile has bid him broken down to the dirt the first man came from, and yet he stands before his king with all the pride he once had as prince.

Pride that he is different, now; pride not in himself, but in his king.

There are shadows beneath David’s eyes that his wife would ask thrice redone if they were to paint his expression, and electricity races through his veins as the urge to do just that overcomes him.

“Three years have passed, and your first words are of faith.”

“I’ve had a long time to reconsider my beliefs.”

“In me, but not in God?”

“I never believed in God.”

He thinks, if David were standing, he might collapse back into his seat as the full force of those words reached him.

As it is, the king’s head falls back against the headrest, his eyelids flutter shut and his lower lip finds itself trapped between straight, white, royal teeth.

A laugh builds in his throat as he thinks about how much truth rings in the last of that sentence.

“I could have you hung,” the king announces, recovered. “For laughing at the king.”

“Hanged,” he corrects, without thought. It’s been long years, but he still has not trained himself to unlearn all of his bad habits. “Clothing is hung.”

The king’s sigh is weary and long-suffering.

“Hello, Jack,” the king greets, formalities scratching their way to the surface, even after their conversation has already begun.

“Your Highness,” Jack returns, practiced bow punctuating his phrase.

“Please,” the king asks, and he’s not begging, not yet, and he gets to his feet. “I get enough of that from everyone else. Call me David.”

Jack can’t bring himself to, despite the urge.

The king rounds his table slowly, hand trailing along the back of seats that look more comfortable than the ones Silas had requested.

( _“If they are uncomfortable,” his father, his king, had told him, watching as his child squirmed. “They are far less likely to bore me with petty words.”_

 _“If they are uncomfortable, they will get straight to the point.”_ )

“Please,” the king asks again, the new king, the _better_ king, and this time he is begging. “No one’s called me  by anything but titles since the ceremony. It’s been years since anyone but my mother called me David.”

In the silence that follows, the king – not David, he cannot call him _David_ – leans against the bench, a picture of regal elegance even with his arms across his chest.

“What of my sister?” and he’s avoiding it, he knows, but he has no other choice.

He will not take any offered seat – he will not be uncomfortable, he will not get straight to the point.

He will not break. Not yet.

“She left, Jack. She never wanted this, no matter what she pretended. I sent her to the countryside. She’s free there. She can be whoever she wants to be.”

“Your son?”

“Dead.”

He wants to say he’s sorry, he does – that was his nephew, his _blood_ , he cannot be anything but sorry – but the look on David’s – not David’s, the king’s – face tells him that too much time has passed for his pity to be worth anything.

“I’m sorry,” he says anyway. “I wish I’d known.”

“What would you have done, Jack?” and it is torture, he knows it is, to hear that name from those lips, but he cannot return the favour. He will not break. Not yet. “Would you have sent flowers?”

Of course he’d have sent flowers. He’d have sent gardens, farms, _countries_ worth, if he’d known that they’d have eased the pain.

“How?” Jack asks, instead of answering.

 “I had to make a choice.”

And that’s the key, isn’t it, to ruling? Choices. David had been forced time and time again to make choices and even if he hadn’t known it, all they had been were choices between the crown as a loved king and the crown as a feared one.

Jack never had any doubts that it would be the former.

“You chose your country,” Jack says, and he doesn’t know if it sounds as unbiased as he wants it to, but it is not intended as either insult or compliment and he knows it comes across as one.

Which one, he is not sure, and David’s – the _king’s_ – face gives nothing away.

“I chose myself.”

And whatever doubts Jack had that David would be the king their country needed, hidden from him though they were, disappeared.

David had never been anything but righteous, good and kind.

If he chose himself, it was not because he was selfish.

It was because he had always been anything but.

David – and he’s David now, not Shepherd as he had been and not the king as he was supposed to be – is crying. His face, aside from the tear tracks that cover it, reveals nothing about what he is feeling, about the turmoil that exists just beneath his skin.

“David,” Jack breathes, voice breaking, and with it, the levee.

Somewhere in the middle, they meet.

David’s face finds a place in the space between Jack’s neck and shoulder, above his heart as if it means something, and the warm droplets of his tears feel like much needed rain on Jack’s dry skin.

A large hand finds a groove on the clothed curve of Jack’s hip, fingers clenched in common clothes as if he’s never had a distaste for them (and of course he hasn’t, they were once more than he had), and the pressure of his grip drags Jack ever closer to his king.

They fit like puzzle pieces, a full picture neither of them can see.

Jack goes straight for bare skin – has been staring at the thin strip revealed by crossed arms lifting a too short jacket since it first flashed its way across the room – and on contact, everything in him breaks.

One of his hands finds its way around his king, reaching ever closer to his spine until it is hidden somewhere behind a tailored shirt and rests between two angel wing shaped shoulder blades. The other curls into golden hair that has always looked like a shining halo, even in the darkness.

The beat of his king’s heart races underneath his palm and he feels it, ever stronger, beneath his lips, as he presses a lone, unforeseen kiss, against his king’s neck.

They do not still, they do not break apart, but they do not breathe.

Not until the king himself presses that same kiss to Jack’s neck, to the same place that Jack kissed his own, and oxygen floods the lungs of them both like a cleanse they hadn’t known they needed.

“I missed you,” the king is saying. “I missed you so much, and I didn’t know why, or _how_ , and I couldn’t bring you back. I couldn’t. My first act as king could not be to go against the last of the last king, no matter how bad a king he had been, and it – I couldn’t bring you back. I wanted to, I wanted to bring you back more than anything and I tried, I did – I waited and I waited and I _waited_ until enough time had passed for them to forget what Silas had said about you. I gave them other things to talk about, I gave them better gossip. God, I gave them everything I had and I still had to wait.”

Jack’s hand in his hair soothes gentle circles against his scalp and still, David talks as if he’s losing a war. “Shh,” he’s whispering, but they both know he doesn’t want the king to stop.

David’s voice is muffled by the skin of Jack’s dirty neck, but neither of them makes any indication of a desire to move. Jack can hear him clearly, and he’s the only one that needs to.

“I did nothing but miss you for a year,” David says, and Jack feels some tension leak out of his own body, knowing he was not alone in that. “At every meeting, in every press release, you were there like a voice in the back of my head, reminding me that Silas still had some control over the way that this country was ruled. Michelle knew, she knew I couldn’t handle the pressure – not of the kingdom, I handled it better than even I expected – but of you, and of Silas. The pressure of knowing that because of you both, I couldn’t bring you back. Not in that first year. And then eighteen months had passed and I walked around the kingdom, I walked the streets, and the way they looked at me as if I was the first royal person they’d seen in their midst made me feel like I was the only person that realised you were gone. Here, it wasn’t so bad. Everyone knew you were gone, everyone felt it, but they pretended they didn’t. They hid behind veils, but everyone knew the truth. Out there – out in the real world – they treated you like a fad, like a clothing trend that had been and gone and was erased from the shelves. Out there it felt like you had never been here, and it _hurt_.”

“David,” Jack breathes, but he doesn’t have any words to follow it.

David’s skin feels warm beneath his palm, and their combined sweat makes him want to remove his hand, but he cannot. Out of desire to maintain every possible point of contact, he does not move, and he knows that David does not mind.

He presses another kiss to his king’s neck, and feels lips against his pulse point in return, amidst tears that still fall.

“I had no idea what I felt,” David whispers, barely loud enough to be heard. “I had no idea, but everyone else knew. Everyone else could see the way you got to me, even when I couldn’t, and even as the new war began, I didn’t realise.”

“The new war?”

“At the end of the second year, the second year you were gone, the border towns started rebelling again. Against Gath, and their rulers – the people of Port Prosperity wanted to be under my rule, not theirs.”

“And now?” Jack asks, because it is a welcome distraction from the pressure building in his heart.

“Now the war is over.”

It’s all David says on the matter, and Jack can’t help but think he means more than just the war over the border towns.

They stand together, Jack reaching for every piece of skin he can find and David pulling him closer than he ever thought he had any right to be, for a long time.

Neither of them say a word, they just breathe against each other’s skin, finding comfort in the presence of the other man.

“I missed you so much,” David says, at the same time Jack says, “You said you had no idea what you felt.”

Neither of them laugh, but their mirth is palpable.

“You were gone so long,” David starts, by way of explanation.

“I’d never been around long in the first place.”

“No,” David agrees, and his breath of laughter burns across Jack’s skin like hellfire. “But you had a presence.”

“Like God?” Jack says, because it’s what he’s supposed to say.

“Like you,” David corrects, ignoring the question for what it is – a distraction.

“I wanted to call you back to hurt you, in the beginning. Even though I missed you, even though I wanted you back just to make this – this place feel normal again. I wanted you back to hurt you for the way you made me miss you, even when I had no reason to.”

Understanding floods Jack’s mind. He would have felt the same, in David’s position – had felt the same, from his position in exile. He wanted to be called back so he could hurt his supposed king for torturing him, even from such a great distance.

David presses a kiss – unprompted this time – against Jack’s neck, and does not speak again until Jack returns the favour.

“Michelle told me she feared for me, when she realised. She saw how obsessed I was with bringing you back – even when I didn’t want to hurt you, even when I didn’t know why I wanted to – and she told me that I couldn’t keep going the way that I was. She told me I was just dragging myself down, and that the kingdom would suffer for it.”

Jack has the urge to pull back, to see David’s face and see if he’s telling the truth – that David missing him would cause the kingdom to fall into ruin again – but David does not relinquish his grip on his hip or around his shoulders, and Jack has no choice but to stay where he is.

“She was right, in a way. The kingdom did suffer for it.”

For the first time in a long time, guilt becomes Jack’s primary emotion.

“What did you do, David?”

“I made a choice.”

All at once, their conversation echoes inside Jack’s head and he has to pull back, he has to see, he has to _know._

David mourns his loss with a whimper unbefitting of a king, even though the only thing that’s changed is Jack pulling back enough to look him in the eyes.

“David,” he begins, and it’s the voice he used to use as a prince, to strike fear into the people that weren’t sufficiently afraid. He doesn’t know if it will work, but he has to try, because – because he can’t have, David can’t have -

His king doesn’t swallow in fear, but it’s a near thing.

“David,” Jack tries again, and he has to force the words through his throat as it closes. “David, tell me – _tell me_ you didn’t -”

_Tell me you didn’t choose me over your son, tell me you didn’t choose my freedom over something more important._

“I had to make a choice, Jack,” David says, and Jack’s heart almost breaks. “It was – it was – I couldn’t decide for such a long time, and I don’t even know if I made the right decision. Even now, even with you here, I don’t – I don’t know if I-”

“What were your choices, David? What did you –?”

“He got sick. My – my son got sick, and I was – I was on the front, I had to be on the front. I couldn’t just sit here, I couldn’t do nothing, I was – I did what you would do, what your father would have made you do.”

“David, you –” _you never had to do that, it was never your job to be me, to be my father – the whole point was that you were not_ , Jack wants to say, but he can’t. He doesn’t have to. David knows.

“He got sick, Jack, and I – I knew as soon as I heard that I would have to lose him. God never said, He never – He told me I could stay, and we would win the war, or I could leave and we would lose, we would be invaded. He never said that I had to sacrifice my son for that to happen, but I – I knew. I always knew. And I still – I still chose -”

And all at once, Jack realises what he meant when he said he did what Jack or Silas would have done.

He chose his country over his child.

He did the unthinkable for the good of his country, and he lost his child – and his wife – because of it.

“Oh, David,” he says, voice quiet, and David has not stopped crying since he started, but now Jack is, too. “David, I’m so sorry.”

And the thing is, he means it.

David returns to his place, curled into Jack’s body like he has only ever belonged there, and Jack lets him, has to let him, because he won the war but he lost the battle, lost his son and his wife and very nearly his mind, and it’s all Jack’s family’s fault, if not Jack’s alone.

“I loved you,” David says, after a moment. Jack’s tears have stopped falling and he can’t quite tell but he thinks David’s have, too, and he sucks in a gasp as soon as the muffled words reach his ears.

“David…” he starts, but he still has no words. He can feel them underneath his skin, knocking about inside his head but the whole kingdom worth of words he knows crumbles before they make it to his lips.

“I loved you when you were here, under Silas, even when you hated me. I loved you because I thought of you like a brother and I didn’t know you were – I didn’t know you were what you were, or that you were trying to overthrow your dad, or – or anything. I just – I loved you and I didn’t know it and maybe it’s just hindsight making me think of it like this but I – I loved you then, and it wasn’t… I don’t think it was as innocently or as purely as I loved Michelle.”

Jack can’t find the words he needs, doesn’t even know where to start searching for them, so he says nothing. He slides his hand from the back of David’s head down to the base of his neck and rubs circles against his skin with his thumb.

He wants to apologise for everything that David has been through – because of his father, his sister, because of _him_. He wants to  apologise for everything that God has put him through and he knows that he’s no reverend and he can’t offer absolution, but maybe he can offer peace, of mind or of heart, or maybe he can just offer the means to help him forget.

“I loved you when you were gone, too,” David continues, and his voice stings where it touches Jack’s skin, but it’s the pleasant kind of pain, a burn he has looked forward to and missed, all while experiencing it. “I loved you when I wanted to hurt you, I loved you when I wanted you back to fight for us, and I loved you when I didn’t have a reason to want you back.”

“David, you –” _don’t have to tell me this, it’s okay. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself anymore. You don’t have to choose anymore._

“No, I – let me do this,” his king interrupts, as if he can read his thoughts.

“Okay, David,” Jack whispers, and knowing the full weight of its meaning, presses a kiss to his king’s neck once more. “Okay.”

David does not return the kiss.

“Everyone – everyone knew,” David says, and it’s the first time he’s really faltered since he began his little monologue. “Everyone could tell that you – you not being here was having an effect on me, on the way I made my decisions. I always did what was right, I know I did – we wouldn’t, Gilboa wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t – but I – it was always you that crossed my mind before I made a decision, and it’s – it’s like everyone knew. It would have been hard for them to know different, I think. I was always – I always spoke about what you had sacrificed, what you gave up for the kingdom, and I think they knew that was out of more than a kindness to my wife. At least, after the first year.

“Before then, I think they might have speculated, but after – after the war, they all knew. They knew I loved you and that I had loved you for the entire time. With Michelle gone, I had no reason to speak of you so freely, I had no reason to beg that you be returned from exile or that the press talk about other things to make them forget the bad things that your family had done. I had no reason to, other than the fact that I loved you, and they knew it.”

Jack presses his lips together, can feel the tears making their way down his cheeks, and he swallows.

“But you are their favoured king,” he whispers, lips pressed close to David’s ear. “So they said nothing.”

“Unless I admitted to it, nobody knew for sure, and I was too afraid of it being true to say anything.”

Jack tenses, knows David can feel it, but he cannot move.

_He doesn’t want this._

“When you came back,” David continues, despite the fact that he is practically holding a statue. “Just now, when you came back, and you said you would – you would only ever have faith in me, as a higher power, I was – I didn’t know if it was real. That’s why I was – I was so afraid. Why I didn’t – why I couldn’t move, when you came in.”

“I don’t-” Jack starts, but David cuts him off.

“All these years I’ve missed you, all these years I’ve loved you without knowing it and hated you for making me love you, I’ve – I’ve thought about it. Of you coming back. I’ve thought about what you would say, what you would do, how you would look. I’ve imagined every possible variation of it and I – when I saw you there, I thought it was just another one of my imaginings. I never – I always wanted you to come back but I was always scared that you _would_ , that I would see you and I’d realise that I really was in love with you and I didn’t – I couldn’t – I wasn’t sure that –”

“David, do you-” Jack starts, and he has every intent to finish that question, but someone knocks on the door and a guard steps through, and they have barely a second to break apart before one of the Ministers steps through, announcing urgent business that the king has to attend to.

Their king asks for a moment alone with his guest, and the Minister and the guard grant it, but they make a point of emphasising the urgency of the matter.

“David, go,” Jack says, when his king turns back to him, expression filled with guilt, before the other man can get a word in. Rude, perhaps, to speak out of turn to a king, but exile has not changed Jack that much. “Your people need you.”

“You need me,” David protests, not even bothered by Jack’s tone.

“I’ll still be here when you return,” Jack reminds him.

“And my people will still be there when I return to them.”

Jack presses his lips together to hide the smile he can feel breaking out across his face, and he lowers his head to stare at his dirt-covered shoes.

“I won’t let you choose me over your people,” he tells his toes. “I will not be the cause for your country’s downfall.”

“Three years ago, you would gladly have let me fail,” David says, but they both know that’s not quite true. “You would have made the whole world wait while you were taken care of.”

That part, at least, is true.

“David,” Jack says, and he’s smiling despite the obvious insult. “Three years ago I did not possess the patience to wait for instant gratification. I’ve changed.”

David steps forward, back into Jack’s space, but the moment has passed and whatever they had while they held each other is different – not gone, not completely, but they have no time to try and find it again.

David knows this, but he still makes a point to be close.

“Jack,” he pleads. “Promise me you’ll be here.”

“David,” Jack returns, meeting his king’s gaze with a rare smile. “I’ll never leave again.”

 

 [Epilogue]

 

 “You know, when I said I have faith in you and you alone, I think I was suffering from severe dehydration and mental exhaustion.”

David looks over from where he’s standing in front of the mirror, hands up near his collar, to see Jack sprawled across his bed, sheet barely covering his lower half, which David knows is bare.

They’re alone in their room, and they know that no one is outside, because that’s the way David likes to have it. When he clears a room, he wants it clear, not left with the barest of people, and he refuses to have people stationed outside his private chambers.

Secrets are shared and revealed when people forget that the helpers have ears, too.

He doesn’t like to forget that they are people, and doesn’t want others forgetting it either.

“You say that every day,” David reminds him.

Jack huffs a laugh, his smiles no less rare but all the more beautiful, even after so many years, and David is distracted from the task at hand as Jack climbs his way off the bed.

He’s smiling, yes, but that fades. His nakedness does not.

Jack is not perturbed by it, never has been as long as David has known him, and he does not hide as he approaches his king.

“And it’s no less true. I swear it, by the blood in my veins, I was stupid to have faith in a man who, even after all these years, cannot tie a tie.”

David smiles despite himself, reaching forward to grab at Jack’s hips as the other man reaches up to fix his tie. They share a smile as they recognise each other’s interest in the turn of events, but they know they don’t have time to take care of the rising problems.

David is a king, after all. He doesn’t have time for life’s little pleasures, unless he makes time, and he cannot make time when there is a war to prevent.

He knows. He’s tried.

“You’re no better at it than I am,” David reminds him, even as he ties it perfectly.

“Only when I feel like it.”

Jack straightens the collar of David’s jacket and smooths his hands over the lapels, patting the fabric gently twice before stepping away and returning to the bed.

David smirks, and rolls his eyes, unashamedly running his gaze over Jack’s form as he resumes his position lounging against the pillows.

As his king watches, Jack takes himself in hand and begins slowly pleasuring himself, mouth falling open as his eyes flutter closed.

“You’d better go,” he breathes, voice rough and smooth at the same time. “You’ve got a war to prevent.”

The king lets out a breathy groan as Jack twists his hand in a particular way and lets out a whimper that heads directly south.

“One’s about to start right here,” David huffs in response, his own voice little more than a breath as he struggles to get air into his lungs.

Jack’s eyes fly open as his king groans again, just in time to see him press a palm, hard, against his groin.

“Mmm,” he hums, continuing his lazy ministrations. “Just what I like to see.”

His laughter is rich and warm and comes from somewhere deep inside his body.

That, it seems, clears David’s mind enough that he removes his hands from his crotch, and shakes his head to clear it completely.

“Don’t – don’t finish until I get back,” he orders, voice very much leaning towards breathless.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Jack retorts, on the end of a whimper.

David has to press the heels of his hands into his eye sockets to get his head clear enough to make it to the door.

“Promise you won’t leave?” he asks, as he always does, tone serious for a moment.

“I promise,” Jack replies, as he always does, and he’s panting lightly, but he still means it. “Now go prevent a war, and try not to think about fucking me into this mattress while you do.”

David leaves the room with a groan caused by a multitude of frustrations.

Jack’s breathy laugh follows him down the corridor.

It feels like he is mocking him, making fun of the way he feels and the fact that he (they) are both in constant fear of losing it – this – what they have found in each other.

And yet.

Here, there is Jack.

Here, there is David.

Here, there is the sound of laughter, and of pleasure, and of love.

**Author's Note:**

> more people need to write about these gay losers so that people forget that i wrote this monstrosity. i wish i'd been drunk so i had an excuse. but no.  
> stone cold sober. super bad at writing the sex. sorry. goodbye. i rEALLY WISH KINGS WAS STILL A THING
> 
> [for those of you confused about what is happening here then okay basically the gist is this is all post show (duh)  
> david became the king (duh)  
> silas died (duh)  
> before silas died he was like LOL JACK U BANNED FOR LIKE EVER  
> so jack was exiled  
> david did no likey but he couldn't bring himself to go against what silas said (like he says in the thing up there what you should have maybe read or read after you have read this) thus jack was gone for like three years  
> shit goes down in those three years like y'know there is war and adventures probably and idk lucinda disappears off the face of the earth bc lol no not a good storyline pls she did not deserve that she's off being hAPPY SOMEWHERE I REFUSE TO BELIEVE OTHERWISE  
> also michelle was like 'my baby is dead leave me alone to die' and she like divorces david or s/th idk specifics my brain doesn't care  
> and then goes and lives in the country and is probably in lesbians with lucinda idk  
> and then jACK COMES BACK YAY  
> and then this whole dumb thing happens  
> tada]  
> [also somehow in my head this twisted so that jack lost his faith in god when he realised the fucker wasn't gonna let him be king so he was like w/E I RENOUNCE UR STUPID ASS and that is a thing or something idk and basically everyone knows that jack is like 'no god for me suckers']  
> this was originally gonna be heavily belief-centred but then i realised i literally could not write anything remotely like that bc i have no idea what faith feels like [lolwut] so this is what happened instead  
> i'm sorry  
> THANKS FOR READING  
> SORRY I'M LAME  
> STALK ME ON TUMBLR IF U WANT MY URL IS THE SAME [there is not a lot of kings there tbh. just a shit ton of sebstan's everything and gay things about probably not gay characters and their definitely not gay actors]


End file.
